Scout
by The Sterling Raven
Summary: The murder of two Star Labs scientist leaves a girl orphaned and high tech weapons in the wrong hands. While Red Arrow tries to track down the weapons, he makes an uneasy partnership with an ally new to the heroing trade. Slight Red Arrow/OC. ON HIATUS.


**Ok, this is my first Young Justice story, I'm also going to call it my first offical story on , (I wrote the other one for a friend, and generally against my will.) I've secretly been obsessing over YJ since it came out, and have been working on this story during some of my classes (study hall is a beautiful thing). **

**Disclaimer, I do not own anything, except any OCs if you don't recognize them then they are mine.**

*****_**flashback***_

The whole night seemed to pass by her car. Jackie could hardly see the road in front of her, even with the windshield wipers on high. Combined with the fact that she was going about twenty miles over the speed limit, her safe driving habits completely disappeared. Not that she cared. At least, not that night.  
>Had this been any normal night, she would have been in bed, relishing the few hours of sleep she had left until the last week of summer vacation. Like most seventeen-year olds, she would've liked to spend the time left having fun. But her parents had had other ideas. Jackie had to spend the whole week as in charge of the archery station at a Girl Scout. This had been her punishment for her entire summer.<br>Jackie hoped that she wouldn't cause any accidents as she drove, and that there were no cops out that night to pull her over. Jackie checked her phone. No new messages or missed calls. She didn't know whether she was worried or relieved about that.  
>She was still over hour away from her home in Star City. And although Jackie was trying her hardest to concentrate on only the road, she could help but remember what had brought her here.<br>_It was the beginning of summer vacation, and right after a fight with Jackie's parents. The fight was over the two topics that never seemed to go unmentioned when the three of them were together: her grades and her behavior.  
>To Jackie, arguing over her grades was stupid. What's done is done, and besides, they weren't that bad... except for chemistry. Science had never been her forte, and her average grades in science classes were 'C's. By now, most parents would have accepted that as a fact, but not hers. They were both scientists at Star Labs, and for some reason they were under the impression that she was going to follow in their footsteps.<br>When her mother brought up science scholarships, Jackie told her 'No way in Hell.' That led into the arguments about her behavior.  
>They thought she was hanging around the wrong crowd. In their eyes, her friends were a bunch of druggies, whose idea of fun was getting drunk and having sex. Being the smartass she was, Jackie said, "You forgot stealing car radios to sell for drug money."<br>After the smoke of profanities cleared, they finally came down to an agreement, Jackie would volunteer at the Girl Scout camp that her aunt Stephanie needed help. In return, she'd be able to see more than just her room that summer.  
><em>Shaking off the memory, Jackie thought about the phone call she received an hour ago from her Aunt Stephanie. She had told Jackie there was an emergency at home, and that she'd better get back A.S.A.P. Not gaining any more information out of her aunt, Jackie packed her bags, asked one of the counselors to sign her out of camp, and left.  
>Stephanie hadn't been specific about what had happened. Jackie blamed the poor cell phone reception the area. The call had dropped before Stephanie told her what had happened, leaving her exhausted brain to come up with the worst possible scenarios.<br>Her foot crushed the pedal harder.  
>Ten miles from Star City was when she finally slowed to the legal speed, and the rain seemed to slow down with her. She was pleased that she hadn't been the cause of a high-speed chase, but then again, the night was still young and she had further to go.<p>

As she neared her apartment, Jackie could see the lights from the police cars from two streets down. Along with the police cars there was a van that looked a lot like an ambulance.  
>She parked her car on the side of the road, got out of her car, and sprinted towards the building. She was trying to get past a police officer who was determined to keep her out, not believing that she was Jackie Walters, Luke and Maria Walter's teenage daughter, when her aunt ran up to her.<br>"Jackie!" Aunt Stephanie yelled as she hugged her niece. It wasn't her normal up-beat tone her aunt always seemed to have, that she called her with; no, she sounded devastated. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." she kept repeating in Jackie's ear.  
>Jackie felt the color drain from her face."What is it? What happened?" The police officer seemed to accept who she was, and gave her a sympathetic look as her aunt dragged her into the lobby out of the rain.<br>"The police are saying that it was a burglary gone wrong. You're parents must have walked in on the burglar and..." her voice faltered, and she couldn't continue. Jackie didn't need her to finish to know what she was going to say next.  
>Jackie's eyes burned, and she felt tears begin to roll down her face. As she rubbed her eyes, she tried to collect her thoughts. She heard herself ask, "Was it both of them?"<br>Aunt Stephanie nodded, "The police don't know who did this. But they did have some ideas about gangs."  
>"Do you think I can get something from the apartment?"<br>"Give me a moment, I'll ask," Stephanie said as she went to towards a cop.  
>Jackie looked at the police in the lobby, the local news station's reporter and camera crew, and then dared herself to look at the gurneys. The two gurneys being carried out of the building looked as if they were in slow motion, like in a movie. Though this was real, they still served as visible proof that Luke and Maria Walters were dead.<br>Jackie looked away from the gurneys when the tears threatened to start. She wasn't going to start crying now, not in front of all these people. She never cried in public.  
>The news reporter seemed to just notice her. Motioning for the camera man to follow, she walked towards Jackie. "Ms. Walters?" the news reporter asked.<br>"Yes?" said Jackie, trying her hardest to be polite. She was shocked, upset, and soaked. Talking to a reporter was the last thing she wanted to do.  
>"Do you mind answering some questions for-"<br>"No comment," Jackie said harshly. She turned around and walked toward the elevator, and waited for it to come back to the lobby.  
>Her aunt walked back to her and said, "They said that they were almost done processing the scene, so as long as you stay out of the kitchen, you'll be fine."<br>She didn't need to ask why she had to stay out of the kitchen.  
>Jackie walked past the police officers holding back the small crowd in the hall way, through the open door, and stood in the apartment, unquestioned by the cops who were processing the scene. She peeked into the kitchen, where most of the cops were, and she glimpsed a pool of red on the floor before she backed out quickly. She wasn't a squeamish person, but this was different. This was family.<br>She walked in to the family room, and nothing seemed out of place, and the only thing broken was a single window. Heading towards her room, Jackie suspected she'd have to live with at her aunt's apartment for the time being; she couldn't live in a place where her parents died. Jackie stopped at her room, and grabbed a picture off the dresser. It was of their family's vacation to Rome a few years ago during spring break, before mom and dad's work consumed their lives, before Jackie seemed to be put on the back burner. Taking the photo out of the frame, Jackie stuffed it into her pocket.  
>Finally, Jackie came to her parent's office. It seemed like the police hadn't searched in there yet. She went to dad's laptop, and turned it on. Knowing that if she was caught she could be accused of tampering with evidence, but something was telling her to check dad work files. Call it intuition, the voice of God, or just her over active, over tired, crime-drama obsessed teenage imagination; whatever it was, it wouldn't let her leave until she checked the computer.<br>Although her father was, at least in her eyes, a genius, he had some difficulties remembering passwords, so he hardly ever changed them. That made it easy to hack his computer, as long as you could remember passwords better than he did. Luckily for her, dad hadn't changed it while she was away.  
>From her point of view, the computer didn't have any clues or hints on anything that could lead to who did this. Files about work that looked like gibberish to her, bank accounts, and...Hold on, something about the docks.<br>As she was about to open the file on the docks, she heard someone coming up the steps. Shutting down the computer, Jackie grabbed a picture that was standing on the side of the desk and stood up.  
>A cop came in and looked at her. "What are you doing up here Miss?" he asked.<br>"Just looking around," Jackie said, technically not lying.  
>"You must be the Walter kid, then." he said.<br>Quietly she replied, "Yes." she looked down at the picture. "This whole thing feels surreal, like it's a bad nightmare that I can't wake up from. One moment I have a family, the next my parents are dead and my world's turned upside down. The good things in life are just memories. I guess we really don't know what we've got till it's gone. It just so hard to imagine life without them…" She said, feeling tears rising.  
>The police officer was in an awkward position. He looked at the girl and said, "I don't see the harm of letting you look around the place for a few minutes, I guess. Just don't touch anything that could be important."<br>Jackie was tempted to snap that everything was important, but restrained herself. Once the cop had left, Jackie quickly wiped her eyes and thought that it would be best to come back to look for clues on another day.  
>She put the photo back and left the room.<p>

By the time the police said Jackie and Stephanie could leave, it was well past one in the morning. Jackie was half tempted to stay at the house to see if she could find any clues as to who had done this.  
>"Guess you're not going back to camp tomorrow, right Jackie?" Stephanie asked as she got into her car.<br>Questions like these made Jackie wonder how this woman was her mother's sister. Sighing, Jackie said, "Yeah, I'm thinking I'm going to try to clear my head tomorrow, maybe go for a drive, something like that."  
>"Ok honey," Stephanie replied. Jackie's aunt had always been an advocate of self-therapy, thinking that if one couldn't fight their own personal demons, no one could help them do it.<br>She watched as her aunt drove away, waiting a minute before hopping into her own car to follow her. Jackie decided that she'd come back tomorrow, when there wasn't a crowd of police and neighbors in the hallway, watching like hawks. Maybe then she could find something to help her figure out who did this.


End file.
